


Tedium of Minutiae

by esama



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Existential Angst, Fix-It, Gen, Infinity Gems, Not A Fix-It, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time Travel, Tony Stark-centric, i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 17:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10576206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: "We've been here before, having this same conversation."In which long, long time ago Stephen Strange trapped Tony Stark in a time loop.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Tedium of Minutiae 乏味细节](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10622550) by [asadeseki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asadeseki/pseuds/asadeseki)



> unbetaed

Tony looks up from his empty glass as Strange slides down to sit across him on the other side of the kitchen island. The man is watching him warily, his face not quite giving away the nervousness he probably feels – definitely feels, judging by the prickly way the Cloak's collar is standing up, all defensive.

"Doctor Strange, my man, my awesome facial hair bro. Welcome to my humble abode," Tony says, waving a hand at the million dollar penthouse suite and laughs. "You want a drink? I have just the thing for you."

"You know my name," the man comments, his tone half pleased and half uneasy as his eyes narrow and the Cloak shifts behind him.

"Mmhm," Tony agrees and then turns around on his stool, to reach back for the bottle sitting ready on the counter. He sets it down between them and turns it so that Strange can see the label. While the sorcerer frowns at the unopened bottle of Raksi, Tony turns again to get a couple of bhatti glasses from the cupboard.

"You…  how do you know this?" Strange asks slowly, taking the bottle in hand and examining the Nepalese label. Tony just arches his brows and sets the glasses down, making Strange frown even harder. "How many times have we been here?"

"Enough many times," Tony answers. "It's not exactly right now every time, but it's roughly between now and May 4th, 2018, so I'm usually prepared for this."

"What happens in May 4th, 2018?" Strange asks quickly.

"The obvious. We die a horrible gruesome death," Tony shrugs. "And the world ends. Come on, let's have a drink."

Strange eyes him for a moment and then opens the Raksi bottle with a slight hand movement, not touching the cap at all. Once Tony had taken it for a sort of magical vanity – now he knows that the mere act of opening a bottle by hand is actually painful for the guy. Magic or not, the guys had been pretty much pulverised not that long ago.

Strange pours for both of them, and then watches as Tony takes the first swallow. Raksi isn't his favourite spirits ever – mostly because it always reminds him of Strange – but it's pleasantly soft as alcohol goes. "See, not poisoned," Tony points out, and with a wry smile Strange takes a sip, just to be polite.

"I assume I'm the one responsible for that," the man says abruptly and nods at Tony's left hand.

Tony looks down and spreads his fingers out. Around his wrist whirls a green spell, like a half invisible shackle. "Yeah," he agrees and then holds his wrist out. "Go on, have a closer look. I know you want to."

Strange gives him a slight grimace but he does turn to the spell, examining it with uneasy fascination. He doesn't quite reach out to touch it, but he does move a hand over it and the constant spin of faintly glowing green circles around Tony's wrist slows down enough that he can actually examine their formation. "This is –" the sorcerer snaps his mouth shut abruptly and turns his eyes to him. There's a bit of horror in his expression.

"Yeah," Tony agrees with a mirthless chuckle and takes another sip of the drink. "Yeah, it is."

"Why would I do this?" Strange asks with disbelief. "Not only is this breaking… so many laws of magic I can't even start to explain it, but you're not a sorcerer. Why would I do this for someone who doesn't even use the mystic arts?"

"Because mystic arts didn't do anything, in the end," Tony answers with a shrug and looks at the spell. "And because at that point, you were angrier than you were sane. You wanted revenge more than you wanted to save the world. And I was revenge."

"You're…" Strange straightens his back a little, watching him. "But you're Iron Man."

Tony laughs. "Iron Man is… a new development," he says. "I was something else back then."

* * *

 

In his first life Tony had been unrepentant weapons developer until the very end, and he'd _loved_ it, never felt a single bit guilty about it. He hadn't ever been forced to come face to face with the consequences of his inventions in that life, and he'd never once considered the collateral damage. He had never needed to.

Keeps your friends rich and enemies rich and wait to see which is which. That had been his motto and it turns out that when you keep _everyone_ rich, no one wants to get rid of you. He was the goose that laid golden eggs for everybody. So… it had never occurred to Obadiah to get rid of him.

No Afghanistan, no self discovery, nothing – so, Tony made weapons and he was _good_ at it. In that life his thing was weapons delivery systems. His unmanned drones were state of the art at half the price of his competitors, with increased flight times and battery capabilities.

Not quite as incredible or world changing as Iron Man – but that was a very different world.

It wasn't all he developed that first life, but to be honest, Tony doesn't remember that much of the little things – it was pretty long ago. He remembers being a complete asshole, though – remembers Pepper standing at his side and bearing it all with fixed expression. Remembers being friends with Rhodey until they weren't anymore. Rhodey was good man though all his lives. Tony wasn't.

He earned his reputation as the Merchant of Death that life and he'd relished it, made it his slogan. He was a real world supervillain, according to the news papers – one no one could do anything about because he had the United Armed Forces in his back pocket. Armed Forces hated him too – but he made them some damn fine guns, so, they endured him.

And when Battle of New York happened, when the Avengers popped into existence in space that Iron Man had never habited, it was him the Armed Forces came to about reverse engineering Chitauri Technology.

Tony never did come into contact with the Avengers that life, not really. He saw them on the news same as everyone, and he recalls vaguely being once in the same party as Rogers, who was given some award or another – but that was about it. He did brush in with SHIELD every now and then, but… that was in the same capacity he worked with the Armed Forces.

And then Thanos started looming ahead.

* * *

 

"I was a brand name, by that point," Tony says with a grin while Strange stares at him with fixed expression. "Think how I'm now, but with death and destruction. When the Armed Forces decided they needed a face for upcoming war, one that would inspire people to think we could actually win… they chose me."

"Why not the Avengers?" Strange asks.

"They did their part but there were issues with Thor and Cap," Tony says. "I don't really remember what, but something about their politics. I mean, our war wasn't very patriotic or old fashioned – our war was fucking scifi survival horror. And I guess they were too _good_ to market whole thing – I wasn't. I was the Merchant of Death, who would rain destruction down upon our enemies."

"Has a comforting ring to it," Strange comments wryly and sips his Raksi.

"Doesn't it just," Tony laughs. "I _loved_ it. I took that little promotional trick and I _owned_ it, milked it for all it was worth. I didn't care about the collateral damage or the lives ruined…. I just cared about the numbers and the results – and the fame and fortune I got out of it. I was pretty shallow back then."

"Uh-huh," Strange says, watching him. "That doesn't explain why I chose you. If anything… you're the last person I would've picked."

"And I was, too. Just give me a moment, I'm painting a picture here," Tony says, running a finger along the edge of his now empty bhatti glass. "We started losing the war pretty quickly. Well, we were never really winning. That's what happens when the opposing side has the higher ground all the time – they could just lob rocks at us and there was little we could do. We lost city after city. Bad for morale, that – and I was the poster boy of the war, so morale was my business as much the weapons were. So, my speeches stopped being about winning – we were never going to do that. They started being about just getting some retribution for our losses."

He's quiet for a moment, thinking back to it with a grimace. "We'd lost most of the governments at that point. Side effect of having your capitals bombed from the orbit, movie style. So, I was one of the last voices of… establishment. And I give good speeches."

"And that's why I did _this_?" Strange asks with a frown, motioning at Tony's wrist.

Tony looks down at the spell and shrugs. "You sorcerers didn't even get involved with the war until Kamar-Taj was lost in one of the orbital bombings – the last of your Sanctums. _Then_ you got involved," he says and shrugs. "And then Thanos got out the glove and it didn't even matter."

"The… glove?" Strange asks with a frown.

"The glove – the Infinity Gauntlet," Tony says and waves a dismissive hand. "It's a thing he build who knows when – you put the Infinity Stones onto it. And then you can do… anything and everything. He didn't have any of the stones at first – but once he got Mind Stone from the Avengers, the rest were easy to get."

Strange leans back, watching him silently. "He got it from Vision?"

"Vision didn't even exist in that world," Tony says, arching his eyebrows a little. "I was never Iron Man, remember? Which mean there was no Ultron, no Sokovia – and no Vision. All of that is pretty new, really."

"Right," Strange says and sighs, running a hand over his beard. "So, with the power of the Mind Stone, Thanos bend people to his will and acquired rest of the stones?"

"Asgard had three of them – the Reality, the Space and the Soul Gems – so all he needed was to get one Asgardian in the right place under his will and then he was up to four, just like that," Tony says, snapping his fingers. "No idea where he got the Power Gem from, it just was there one day. And all this happened inside couple of days. Turns out the whole war was just him playing with us."

"And then?"

"And then we lost," Tony shrugs fatalistically. "Earth burned. I was in a bunker good two miles under the surface of the Earth at that point – I'd been there for most of the war, actually – so I survived what he did to the atmosphere. 99.9999 and so on percent of the population didn't."

Strange doesn't say anything for a moment, just watches him quietly, like he's trying to guess how truthful he's being. "And then I came for you," he finally guesses.

"And then you came for me," Tony agrees and looks down at his glass. "I didn't know a thing about you before that – you were… pretty much insane at that point. I think you did this," he motions at his wrist. "To yourself, trying to fix things. Probably did it a bunch of times, but it didn't work. Something-something about you not being able to go past beyond certain point. I don't know."

Strange considers that for a moment. "No I wouldn't have been able to," he agrees finally. "There are certain limitations sorcerers can't go past, even with an Infinity Stone. We can't… undo ourselves."

"But you can undo others," Tony says and shrugs dismissively. He'd looked into magic, once. It hadn't really agreed with him.

Strange is quiet for a while, staring at the spell whirling around Tony's wrist. "We've been here before, having this same conversation."

"Pretty much, yeah," Tony shrugs.

"Why haven't I undone that?" the sorcerer asks, motioning at the spell.

"Because it hasn't worked yet," Tony says simply. "We always die and the world always gets destroyed."

* * *

 

Tony spend most of his second life freaking the fuck out. He had the memories of a 48 year old war mongering weapons developer in his very young head and it didn't settle in well. Under the watchful eye of his none too pleased father and constantly overwhelmed mother, Tony was declared mentally impaired before he turned three.

It wasn't until his parents died and he was left the sole inheritor of a billion dollar empire that he cleared the haze of psychotics he'd been under for most of his second life. At that point, he'd figured that the memories of his first life were more or less imaginary, something he'd build up over the years under the drugs to escape from… to escape. He was insane and that was that.

Obadiah took charge of him and as his proxy and legal guardian took over Stark Industries – and Tony let him. He was still under enough drugs to dull the reality around him into a sort of blur and he didn't really… care. Twenty years of psychiatric care and well meaning professionals had convinced him that he was beyond the point of return and he'd sort of settled into it.

Occasionally, he thought up weapons to make. Occasionally he thought of the Chitauri, the technologies he'd derived from their tech. Occasionally he remembered Thanos.

Increased dosage usually fixed that, though.

Tony didn't really pay that much attention to what happened to the world in that life. He thinks later on that Stark Industries probably didn't do too well, without him churning out new and improved ways for people to kill each other – but that might just be his ego talking. Chances are they got other inventors to fill that hole.

When the Battle of New York too place, he glimpsed it on TV and then went to bed and didn't come out until the news had stopped talking about the Avengers again.

When Thanos came, Tony hid under the bed and burned with the rest of the world.

* * *

 

"Avengers seem to be universal," Strange comments idly. "Which is interesting since I was under the impression you were the driving force behind them."

Tony shrugs. "SHIELD invented the Avengers – I was just the first attempted recruit, in this go-around," he says. "Also there's this thing that happens around 2008 – after which more super powered people start popping up on earth. It was pretty normal world before that – then Bruce Banner, Thor lands in New Mexico for no particularly well explained reason, Captain America is found, and so on and so on. I think it has to do with Infinity Stones and Thanos wrecking the planet with them."

"Hmm," Strange answers, thinking about it. "You might be right. The Infinity Stones are incredibly powerful – it would not surprise me if their power radiates back in time, prompting a sort of… pre-emptive metaphysical immune response from Earth."

"Sure, why not," Tony agrees. "Anyway, Avengers always tend to happen. The only time they didn't was when I stole the Tesseract from SHIELD."

"Oh?" Strange asks with interest.

"Fourth life," Tony says and then reaches for the Raksi bottle, pouring himself another drink. "The third one I went back to weapons development. I went back to it _hard_."

* * *

 

In his third life Tony build his first bomb at the age of five, scaring the hell out of his mother and father and prompting dozens of counter measures around the house. In the end, though his parents were a lot of things, responsible was not one of them. It only took until Tony was eight that instead of stopping him, Howard Stark started prodding his son along.

That was the first life where Howard called Tony his _best creation_. It never stopped being thoroughly creepy.

In his third life, Tony did all he could do to prepare for the Chitauri and for Thanos and all the forces he'd bring to Earth. Tony build weapon after weapon after weapon – eventually leaving Earth tech behind and starting to recreate what he'd learned from the Chitauri, and from the later alien tech he'd gotten chance to experiment with in his first life.

In his third life, Tony invented – or rather, reverse engineered back in time – the repulsor technology. It wasn't exactly how the Chitauri had achieved propulsion with their hover crafts and whatnot, but it was from Chitauri's tech that Tony learned how to agitate particles to high enough degree to make a beam that generated actual usable thrust – and without blowing up the device that generated it too. Repulsors were crude… but they got close enough to make a difference, Tony thought.

There was the problem of power, though. Repulsor technology wasn't and still isn't exactly energy efficient. It took then, and still does, more power to actually make the repulsor ray than any engine or conventional generator then or now could supply. So, he had the technology to turn every missile on earth into intercontinental one – but in order for that to actually work, one would have to strap a conventional missile's worth of fuel and an engine to it. Not exactly practical.

Still, it was one hell of a feat for early 80's. It was enough of an achievement to make people nervous.

So SHIELD took _charge_ of Tony after that with Howard's approval. According to Howard it was because Tony's inventions had the chance of destabilising the balance of power. Cold War was still a thing, after all, and Tony had already fucked things up a little by with his new and improved drone ideas.

Being with SHIELD was fine, though. SHIELD was the driving force behind the Avengers after all, and Avengers had fought back the Chitauri just by themselves. In SHIELD Tony thought he could make a real difference.

So he build weapons of various styles for SHIELD until his parents died – though this time it wasn't in a car crash, but a plane crash. Tony didn't think much about it at the time, though. He was maybe still stinging a bit from almost twenty years – and then the 30 more years of the ensuing fallout – of bad psychiatric care in his second life.

When he was twenty five, Fury showed him the Tesseract.

* * *

 

Tony falls quiet and Strange doesn't say anything for a long time either, just watches him. Eventually though, the silence stretches on for too long and Strange asks, "Did you know it was an Infinity Stone?"

"I suspected," Tony says, staring at his glass – empty again. "It was obviously extraterrestrial, and things with as much power as the Tesseract aren't exactly common. And I knew there were at least two Infinity Stones on Earth when Thanos came – your Time Stone and the Mind Stone. It wasn't that big of a stretch to assume there might've been others."

"The Eye of Agamotto isn't really mine."

Tony looks at him. "Trust me, it will be," he says and shakes his head. "Anyway, the Tesseract. SHIELD let me examine it at first, and experiment with it later – and so we broke it loose good twenty years ahead of time."

Strange frowns. "Broke it loose," he says slowly.

Tony nods and then shakes his head. "The Tesseract is a containment field," he says. "Build to stifle the stone inside it. Over the years due to lot of experimenting, we weakened it – and the Infinity Stone inside it broke loose. That's what called Thanos' attention to Earth in the first place – that's why the Chitauri came. We invited him in when we rang that cosmic bell."

"Ah," Strange says after a moment.

"Yeah," Tony says. "We had an earlier invasion – and it being mid 90s, it didn't go too well for us."

Strange hums in agreement and then leans in with interest. "Did you die before 2018 that life?"

Tony laughs bitterly and shakes his head. "So, my fourth life," he says abruptly. "I stole the Tesseract from SHIELD and dropped in Mariana Trench."

The sorcerer blinks at that and then leans back a bit. "Alright," he then says, and his tone is humouring. "How did that affect the events?"

* * *

 

The fourth life, Avengers never emerged. Bruce Banner never experimented with gamma radiation, Steve Rogers was never found in the Arctic, and if Thor was dropped on Earth, he didn't so much as make a splash. Barton and Romanov were probably still agents of SHIELD – but that's also probably all they were. Tony never heard about them. Spiderman never appeared either – Wakanda remained in isolation.

How the absence of the Tesseract made all that possible, Tony didn't figure out until lot, lot later. He plucked the cube from it's place early 80's – and so prevented almost 20 years of SHIELD's experimentations with it. In turn, SHIELD couldn't trickle out what they'd learned about it to the general science population and so, studies into gamma rays never got that particular edge that had eventually allowed them to track down the energy signature of the Valkyrie, and which had powered lot of Bruce Banner's experiments.

Why Thor never appeared on Earth was simpler – with Tesseract hidden, Odin had no reason to meddle.

Turned out, the Tesseract was a nexus for lot of things and so removing it prevented lot of those things. Like taking out the lynchpin, it all just fell apart.

And so, Tony had thought that was it – that he'd figured out the way to fix it all. With no Tesseract experimentation, there was no Chitauri invasion, no aliens emerged from an alien portal, Loki never so much as stepped a foot on earth as far as Tony knew. Nothing happened, aside from the usual human fuck ups.

He thought he'd done it, that he'd saved the world. No Tesseract, no Thanos – no end of the world. Right?

After year 2012 he even dared to relax.

Thanos arrived in 2018 anyway – and it was a very weird sort of end of the world, to have the oceans sucked away from inside the Mariana Trench, like gigantic bathtub with it's plug pulled. As far as ends of the world went – and Tony has gone through a lot of them – it was pretty out there.

* * *

 

"How many lives have you lived?" Strange asks quietly.

Tony shakes his head and then looks up at him. "How many times did Dormammu kill you?" he asks.

Strange swallows and doesn't answer. They're both quiet for a long while.

"That was actually one of the nicest lives I've lived," Tony eventually admits. "I mean there's been couple very, _very_ nice ones since – once I even got married and had a kid and everything… but that fourth one was the only really quiet and normal one I had. I mean I was nervous as hell for the whole thing, but it was quiet. Should've tried doing it again at some point."

"You didn't?" Strange asks.

"Doing the same thing over and over gets boring," Tony says. "And that's the worse thing about getting… old. The tedium of doing same thing over and over again."

Strange nods slowly, frowning a bit. "What did you do in your next life, then?"

"I tried something new," Tony shrugs with a sigh and pushes back from the kitchen island. "Come on. Let's go get something to eat."

"It's – " the sorcerer glances at his watch and then away, at the window. His eyebrows arch. "Middle of the night apparently. I didn't realise we'd been talking this long."

"Yeah, and now I'm hungry," Tony says and gets up. "Come on – my treat."


End file.
